If a twin, for example, posed as his brother to sleep with his sister-in-law, he might be prosecuted for criminal impersonation or even sexual assault, but not rape.

At least not yet.

It has happened. Back in 2009, officials said former Orange police Officer Jared Rohrig pretended to be his twin, Joseph, in order to dupe a woman into having sex with him.

She noticed the absence of a tattoo of a cowboy on his buttocks and realized it was Jared and not Joseph. He was charged with sexual assault and faced a possible 10-year prison sentence but later pleaded down to first-degree unlawful restraint and criminal impersonation.

That situation could change. A bill has been proposed that would call it rape if the assault occurred “through the use of false or fraudulent representation, fraudulent concealment, false pretense or personation, trick, artifice or device.”

Despite the Rohrig case, Rep. Steven Stafstrom (D-Bridgeport), co-chair of the legislature’s Judiciary Committee, said, “It’s not a crime with which there will be an extensive number of people charged.”

There are already many instances specified in Connecticut’s sexual assault statutes. Date rape, for example, is a crime in and of itself. Of course, it’s sexual assault according to the law to have sex with someone who is “mentally defective to the extent that such other person is unable to consent,” or too in your care or is physically helpless.

Psychotherapists who have sex with their patients are mentioned in the law, as are coaches, and sexual assault by medical deception is on the books.

But, until now, impersonating someone else in order to trick someone into sexual intercourse is not sexual assault according to the letter of the law.

“My understanding is that under current law if you basically trick someone into something it can be prosecuted as criminal impersonation, which is a Class A misdemeanor,” Stafstrom said.

The goal, Stafstrom said, is not to get specific about every type of horrible thing a person might do, but make it easier for prosecutors to prosecute.

“You put enough law on the book to give a prosecutor the chance to decide what is the appropriate offence to charge based on the crime committed,” he said.

The proposed law is in its initial stages — final language hasn’t even yet been crafted and no public hearing has yet been scheduled — but Stafstrom believes it has a good chance of passage.

“On the face of it I don’t see where the objection would come from but you never know what shakes out in a public hearing,” he said.